Update info

Friday, February 24, 2017

Argentina. An earthquake has struck the north of Argentina near the
border with Chile. It is the third earthquake to strike the region in the last
few months with 6.4 and 6.2 magnitudes... Read more

Bolivia.
A strong earthquake with a
preliminary magnitude of 6.5 has struck a mountainous region in central
Bolivia, with shaking felt in Sucre, Potosi, Padilla and other cities across
the region, seismologists and residents said...
Read more

Colombia. Unseasonal heavy rain strikes Huila
causing several floods. At least one person is dead, 3 are missing and
2,000 have been displaced after heavy, unseasonal rainfall caused several
flooding in central and western parts of Colombia between February 21 and 23,
2017. More heavy rain is expected over the weekend...
Read more

Panama. A 4.7 earthquake caused skyscrapers
in Panama's capital to sway Monday and led to the evacuation of some buildings.
There were no immediate reports of injuries...
Read more

Peru.
The Minister of Education, Marilú
Martens Cortés, reported that 430 educational institutions in the country
suffered serious damage from the occurrence of rain and that all have been
rehabilitated or are in that process, in order to ensure the beginning of the
school year next March 13.... Read more

United
States.

Authorities, Farmers
Struggle to Shore Up Rural Northern California Levees to Stave Off
Failures...Read more

On Monday night,
Mayor Ivy Taylor Declares
State of Disaster After 4 Tornadoes Hit the City of San Antonio, the first step in
getting state and federal help... Read more

Interesting Facts

New earthquake kiosk at University Mall emphasizes preparedness.Brian Blake of Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium and
Illinois Emergency Management Agency Director James K. Joseph, along with other
partners, unveiled a new tool Tuesday at University Mall to help everyone learn
more about preparing for an earthquake...Read more

What the Oroville Dam Disaster Says About America’s Aging
Infrastructure.The crisis, which exposed glaring weaknesses with the dam
complex, also carries an important lesson for the nation: Increasingly, extreme
weather driven by climate change is placing substantial stress on America’s
aging infrastructure...Read more

Mexico City, on the verge of a water crisis. In 1900, when the Gran Canal de Desagüe was completed, it
promised to solve the floods and drainage problems that had overwhelmed the
city for centuries. Only it was not like, Mexico City was sinking. With the
perpetual shortage of water, Mexico City has continued drilling for more, which
has weakened the old clay beds and what has caused it to collapse even more....Read more

What's new in Disaster
Risk Reduction?

Study reveals thousands of buildings in Victoria at risk of
earthquake destruction. It’s only the second such
analysis — after one by the District of North Vancouver in 2015 — conducted
recently by communities in southwestern B.C. which are beginning to grapple
with increasing scientific knowledge that a major earthquake will be
devastating... Read more

Europe leads on
resilient cultural heritage. Europe has launched a new
drive to protect its heritage sites from the risk of disasters, an issue given
added urgency by a string of earthquakes that wrecked age-old buildings in
central Italy...Read more

Canadian Forces on guard for 'Big One' earthquake in B.C.
The Canadian Armed Forces
are prepared to deploy thousands of members if a catastrophic earthquake,
colloquially known as The Big One, strikes the West Coast....Read more

Friday, February 17, 2017

Yesterday during the
Ordinary Session of The Permanent Council, Mister Luis Felipe
Puente, National Civil Protection Coordinator of Mexico, spoke about preparations of the 5th Session of the Global
Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction of American States; that will take place in Cancun, Mexico from 22 to 26 May, 2017. In his speech he highlighted the hard work of Mexico Government to meet expectations on the Platform...Read more

What happened this week?

United States.

It's not
just Oroville: Record rain is straining California's whole flood control
network; According to the U.S...Read more. Army Corps of Engineer’s National Inventory of Dams,
there are 1,585 dams in California...Read more

Tornado
slams town near Texas coast; reports of several injuries, damaged homes. A
confirmed tornado destroyed at least one home and damaged more than a
dozen others Tuesday in a Texas town near the Gulf of Mexico... Read more

The
North Carolina Central University (NCCU) Institute for Homeland Security
and Workforce Development has received $310,000 from the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) for Disaster Preparation Courses... Read more

Colombia.
Catastrophe modeling
firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) has been approved for use by domestic insurance
companies in managing their earthquake risk by the country’s insurance regulator,
the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia... Read more

Interesting Facts

Stunning image from Space shows California's
drought is truly over.
Stunning images from
Space show the dramatic difference in California's drought-stricken vegetation
thanks to heavy rain pummeling the state during a storm last week, as more rain
is predicted...Read more

Can Artificial Intelligence Predict
Earthquakes?Artificial intelligence is different from how
scientists have attempted quake prediction in the past because of improved
machine-learning algorithms and supercomputers as well as the ability to store
and work with vastly greater amounts of data...Read more

Drones: The Next Tool for Humanitarian Workers. The former U.S. Ambassador Jack Chow, now a professor at
Carnegie Mellon University, explains about how drones can be a resource for
humanitarian workers by mitigating some of the challenges faced when delivering
aid in some of the world’s most complex and dangerous operating environments....Read more

What 720,000 years of ice can tell us about
climate change in the past — and the future?An Antarctic two-mile-long ice tube details changes in the
Earth’s temperature, rainfall, and wind over hundreds of thousands of years...Read more

What's new in Disaster
Risk Reduction?

Risk Award will honour hi-tech plan to beat
disasters.Three cutting-edge plans to harness the power
of technology and curb the threats posed by hazards such as floods and
epidemics have been shortlisted for an international award that will be
presented at the 2017 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction... Read more

Santa Monica seeks to pass the nation's most
extensive earthquake retrofit plan. Santa Monica is poised
to require safety improvements to as many as 2,000 earthquake-vulnerable
buildings in what would be the nation’s most extensive seismic retrofitting
effort...Read more

Central Africa spurs disaster risk reduction. Collective action by regional organisations is a key means to
help countries reduce their risk of disasters, and the Economic Community of
Central African States is stepping up its efforts to rein in the impact of
hazards amid rising pressure from climate change...Read more

Friday, February 10, 2017

The
"atmospheric river" returned Tuesday to Northern
California, where snow piled up in the Sierra Nevada and coastal
riverbanks were overwhelmed, flooding rural towns ... Read more

Nine
tornadoes were reported Tuesday in Louisiana and Mississippi -- four of
which have been confirmed -- damaging property, injuring at least 31
people and prompting Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards to declare a
state of emergency in the state...
Read more

Colombia.
A shallow,
5.6-magnitude earthquake rattled residents of Colombia's largest city on
Monday, leading office workers to evacuate buildings and forcing the city's
airport to temporarily close... Read more

Peru. Civil defense authorities in Peru say that
flooding has affected over 90,000 people in the northern region of Piura since
heavy rain began to fall on 30 January ... Read more

Interesting Facts

Gloria Knolls Slide (GKS), the largest submarine landslide. An investigation at Great Barrier Reef margin of north-eastern
Australia. The GKS forms a 20 km along-slope and 8 km across-slope indentation
in the margin, extending from 250 to 1350 m depth...Read more

Earthquake early-warning systems finally becoming a reality. The technology already exists and could give West Coast
residents up to 60 seconds of warning time, depending on how far they are from
the epicenter of the quake...Read more

Drought identified as key to severity of West Nile virus
epidemics. The study analyzed 15 years of data on human
West Nile virus infections from across the United States and found that
epidemics were much larger in drought years and in regions that had not
suffered large epidemics in the past...Read more

What's new in Disaster Risk Reduction?

How can the world reduce disaster losses for the poor?The World Bank has found that disasters cost the global economy
$520 billion per annum when account is taken of the true impact on the poor of
earthquakes, climate change, storms, floods and other hazards... Read more

Risk-prone Philippines steps up urban resilience. The Philippines, one of the most disaster risk-prone nations in
the world, is stepping up efforts to ensure that its communities can withstand
natural and human-induced hazards...Read more

Friday, February 3, 2017

Chile. Wildfire Disaster fueled by Non-Indigenous Tree Plantations and over 238,000 hectares of forests in central and southern Chile have been burned according to the National Forestry Corporation. Ten people are dead as a result of what the Chilean government are calling the largest wildfire in Chile's history... Read more

Ecuador. 5.4 magnitude earthquake shakes Ecuador province affected in 2016 again. It happened in Atacames, Esmeraldas and a tsunami probability was discarded. A tsunami simulation was being performed in Manabí and Esmeraldas while a 3.7 magnitude replica occurred... Read more

Interesting Facts

Prediction of large earthquake probability improved. Researchers of the Mathematics Research Centre (CRM) and the UAB have developed a mathematical law to explain the size distribution of earthquakes, even in the cases of large-scale ones...Read more

Advanced drought and flood risk monitoring program for environmentally vulnerable regions. Princeton professor Eric Wood and his team of engineers have deployed their advanced drought and flood risk monitoring program for environmentally vulnerable regions like Niger and other areas in Africa and in Latin America. The program assimilates weather data that are plentiful but hard to analyze for those on the ground...Read more

What's new in Disaster Risk Reduction?

Protect wetlands to reduce disaster risk. Sites such as mangroves, coral reefs, flood plains or peat marshes are natural buffers against weather hazards including storms and floods, according to experts marking this year's World Wetlands Day... Read moreTackling disaster reduces risk of conflict. The new UN Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, has not wasted any time in higglighting the importance of disaster risk reduction for promoting peace and stability...Read more

Reducing disaster risk helps tackle hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 34 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean still suffer from hunger, but the region is boosting its ability to make agriculture sustainable and ensure food security by curbing disaster risk... Read more

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On behalf of the Section for Risk Management and Adaptation to Climate Change, RISK-MACC, Department of Sustainable Development, Executive Secretariat for Integral Development, General Secretariat of the Organization of American States. Visit our website

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